Space And Stuff, IDK

n-a-s-a:

The only planet that rotates on its side like a barrel is Uranus.

Credit: Lawrence Sromovsky, (Univ. Wisconsin-Madison), Keck Observatory

the-science-llama:

Uranus

weareallstarstuff:

Uranus

space-pics:

Uranus, the beautiful blue pearl in the sky. [1720 x 1720]

http://space-pics.tumblr.com/

distant-traveller:

Uranus and its moons

This European Southern Observatory image show Uranus and several of its moons in near-infrared. From top to bottom, the moons are Titania, Umbriel, Portia, Miranda, Puck, Ariel, and Oberon. The unidentified, round object to the left is a background star. The image scale in indicated by the bar.

Image credit: ESO

This is beautiful.

peteuplink:

Uranus imaged using SLOOH’s Canary Islands 2 High Mag on Dec 18th, 2012 at 21:33:48 UTC

OOOHHHHHHHHHH

kidsneedscience:

The planet Uranus has 27 known moons, the first two of which (Titania and Oberon) were discovered by the man who discovered Uranus, Sir William Hershel, in 1787. Although Herschel believed he had seen as many as 6 moons and possibly a ring, nothing more was confirmed for another 50 years when the next two moons were discovered by William Lassell, which he named Ariel and Umbriel. Lassell deviated slightly from Herschel’s naming tradition and found Umbriel in Alexander Pope’s poem the Rape of the Lock. Since then all additional moons have been named for characters from either Shakespeare or Pope.

First, moons named after characters from Shakespeare:

• A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Titania, Oberon, Puck
• The Tempest: (Ariel), Miranda, Caliban, Sycorax, Prospero, Setebos, Stephano, Trinculo, Francisco, Ferdinand
• King Lear: Cordelia
• Hamlet: Ophelia
• The Taming of the Shrew: Bianca
• Troilus and Cressida: Cressida
• Othello: Desdemona
• Romeo and Juliet: Juliet, Mab
• The Merchant of Venice: Portia
• As You Like It: Rosalind
• Much Ado About Nothing: Margaret
• The Winter’s Tale: Perdita
• Timon of Athens: Cupid

Next, moons named from characters from Pope:

The Rape of the Lock :

• Ariel, Umbriel, Belinda

After the two moons discovered in the 1850s, another moon wasn’t discovered for another century, in 1948. The remaining almost two dozen moons were not discovered until the Voyager 2 flyby in 1986.

Learn more about the plays (including plots, characters and full texts) at www.shakespeare-online.com. You can find Alexander Pope at www.poemhunter.com. You can also click on any of the links above for links to wikipedia.

Image of Uranus’s moons to scale courtesy NASA, in the public domain.

Plushie Celestial Bodies on ThinkGeek.

Available bodies are: Sun, Mercury, Earth, Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn.

Coming soon: Venus, Uranus, Neptune.

I’mma hold out for Uranus, methinks.

sci-fact:

Uranus has 27 known moons, all of which are named after characters from the works of William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope, a unique departure from the traditional Greek and Roman mythological sources. The first four moons were named at the same time by John Herschel in 1852. It began with the fairies Oberon and Titania from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the sylphs Ariel and Umbriel from Pope’s The Rape of the Lock. The idea being that Uranus, as the god of sky, would be attended by spirits of the air. When more moons were discovered (many decades later), the other works of Shakespeare became the primary source. Among them, we have the moons bearing the famous names of characters like Ophelia, Portia, Puck, Rosalind, Miranda, and Juliet. 14 separate literary works are represented in total.

interstellarimagery:

“Uranus: A World On Its Side” by Cameron Stevens

Yessssss